


The first twitch at the thread

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: It’s happening now. It’s happening again. [1]
Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, the magnus archives au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25551193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: Once every hundred years, the primal fears of the universe are called forth into the world in the form of twelve young people who are their avatars. These avatars must live out a ritual to define the terrors and anxieties of the coming age. They are loved. They are hated. They are feared, and they are fear itself. Within two years, they are all dead. It’s happening now. It’s happening again. And somewhere in the distance, a spider is tugging at a thread.
Series: It’s happening now. It’s happening again. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851541
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	The first twitch at the thread

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Aria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria/pseuds/Aria) AU-plotting partner in crime, and [filiabelialis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/filiabelialis/works) for introducing me to TMA to begin with!
> 
> I'm planning to continue to play with this AU a little, probably in the form of a series of free-standing, interconnected ficlets.

_Once every hundred years, the primal fears of the universe are called forth into the world in the form of twelve young people who are their avatars. These avatars must live out a ritual to define the terrors and anxieties of the coming age. They are loved. They are hated. They are feared, and they are fear itself. Within two years, they are all dead. It’s happening now. It’s happening again. And somewhere in the distance, a spider is tugging at a thread._

1)

“You are of the pantheon,” the voice thundered as Valentine fell. “You are of The Flesh, and in so being you are more than mere mortal flesh. You will be loved. You will be hated. You will be brilliant. Within two years, you will be dead,” the voice boomed, and as Valentine plummeted, he felt the resonance of its truth. 

Flesh — he and everyone he had ever loved were nothing but flesh, mounds of intricately differentiated organic matter animated by electrical impulses that were explicable, comprehensible, and only infinitesimally varied from the impulses which animated the creatures he depended upon for sustenance. 

When he was sixteen, Valentine had dated a girl who was a vegetarian. At the time, he’d laughed at her, teased her, gently bullied her with the notion that he’d cook her something delicious — would she like veal? Duck breast? A tender and savory pork loin? On reflection it was hardly a shock that she’d dumped him, rather a surprise that she’d put up with it for as long as she had, but the thought of her restraint had unnerved him. If she truly believed he was doing some harm every time he made himself a sandwich, how could she possibly live with herself in dating him? He’d pushed, trying to find a crack in her conviction, but in the end it had been her image of him which had broken. Valentine fell, and the darkness around him felt reddish with the slowly oxidizing scent of blood spilled by the bodies packed tight into the darkness around him.

Valentine would live, would rule, would create, and would die, as all flesh must eventually slow, stop, and begin to decay. Delia, sixteen years old and bleeding compassion for the sad-eyed cows and bedraggled chickens, had been right, but she had also been mistaken; Valentine could see it now, a he could see the edges of all of the small hypocrisies of his first, human life. The pigs driven towards the slaughterhouse weren’t practically human; it was the people who consumed them who were living, breathing, animal bodies. 

Until they weren’t. And Valentine hit the earth again with a wet, cracking impact.

2)

In the first years of her life, Ruth was the hunted. At first, all she could do was be caught, but as she grew, she learned to run. She ran well, she ran fast, she ran far, and one night she met a stranger in a bus shelter who said that Ruth could be more than even the fastest of the hunted — she could be the whole hunt; the predator, the prey, the endless chase created by both, but which is, itself, an entity as well.

Most days, after coming into the fullness of her power, The Hunt stalked languidly through the world, dragging willing prey back to her lair for a less deadly denouement. One night, however, The Hunt took advantage of her newfound ability to flip her early life on its head and stride out into the darkness as the predator. On the night when Ruth ended and The Hunt began, the girl who was somewhere in between the two hunted her father down, and in the true spirit of the chase, she showed no mercy.

The Hunt doesn’t care whether she is loved or hated. The Hunt does not need to fear or be feared; The Hunt is fear itself.

4)

“Hazel. A false name for a false girl,” the old woman said, and Hazel shook with the contempt in her tone, but she stared right back.

“It’s really my name,” she said, almost rote by now. “Mummy said I could and I changed it legally.” She hadn’t been Emily for years, and Hazel had started to feel a little tight around the edges lately, too, like a snake’s skin preparing to shed, but that didn’t mean this strange woman — this nobody, or nobody that Hazel had ever known before — could take it from her.

“It isn’t,” the old woman said, imperious, but before Hazel could argue with her again, the woman barreled on, offering up the magic words. “You are not Hazel Oak Ash Greenway, and you do not need any of those names as talismans; you were right when you knew you were not Emily, either. You are of the pantheon,” and, just like that, Hazel…

…Hazel was falling…

“You are the host which contains a thousand smaller lives writhing within your immensity, and that is why no one name could contain you. You look like an ordinary girl, but under your skin you contain entire universes. Empires rise and fall behind your eyes while others blink awake for the very first time.”

…Hazel was a god.

7)

“Useless,” a creaking, ancient voice said. “I’m sorry, but the boy is wholly unsuitable for my purposes.

“He’s exactly the right age,” the boy’s father argued, “And god knows he’s afraid.”

“There is a power in his fear,” the old woman agreed, unaware that the boy had crept into the shadow outside the door to listen. “But there’s more to being an avatar than just experiencing fear. He may become suitable eventually, but perhaps not in time; he’s not ripe yet.” Here, she felt the creeping sensation of being _seen_ — a nasty feeling, especially since she had not yet managed to locate the ceaseless watcher this time around, and it is always at its most dangerous when it can See without being Seen — “And I can’t take that risk.”

“You can’t just decide he’s not worth it,” the father argued — a servile, maggoty man, the old woman observed dispassionately. Perhaps not entirely without purpose, she mused to herself, still distracted by the faint whispering feeling of eyes on her, but certainly not a joy to work with. She cut her gaze to the cracked-open sliver of the kitchen door, but there was nothing behind it but darkness. 

“You _promised me_ ,” the boy’s father was still talking, and the fact that he was foolish enough not to fear her, foolish enough to make demands, was probably an illustration of why his offspring was proving to be so unsuitable. Still, there was power here, wrapped around this room one way or another, and she was running out of time to assemble the full set.

“And I keep my word,” she told him, biting down on the smile that was a private joke. “ _He_ is not yet suitable, but I can still find a use for you both.”

9)

It was late in the cycle, to find the ceaseless watcher for the first time — the eye was nosey enough, Ananke thought, smiling a little to herself at her own small and terrible joke, that it rarely waited so long to make its avatar known.

The watcher noticed the smile, of course, but she was young and foolish; she saw but she did not understand. “I said I would hear you out, but I won’t be laughed at,” the little would-be poet said, tone stung with wounded pride. Ananke had done many cruel things in her centuries of life, had pulled at the strings of the universe and arranged it to her satisfaction to the detriment of others a thousand times over as she wove her web, but she was hardly the only one; the watcher had clearly shown no pity or mercy in selecting this girl for its own. Despite her bold words, the watcher twitched again under Ananke’s scrutiny.

“I am not laughing, at you or otherwise,” Ananke told her, finally, after allowing herself one more long moment to revel in the girl’s discomfort. “I am simply pleased to have found you, Aruna, my dear.” The girl started at the use of her given name, rather than the stage-name on the flier which first lead Ananke here tonight. There was always a certain satisfaction in the opportunity to stare back at the ceaseless watcher, before it hit the peak of its power. “I am simply pleased to see you. You generally emerge earlier in the cycle, Watcher. I’ve missed you.”

All it took was just a little push, and Aruna fell.

…

“The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout,” The Desolation mused to herself as Laura watched her from beneath slitted eyes, between her lashes. She’d been the last to fall to the beer-sticky club floor at the show tonight, overwhelmed by the terror mortal bodies were not built to hold. She was usually the last one standing, these days, and while the ability to feel more fear than anyone else around her wasn’t a skill she’d put on her resume, she felt oddly proud of it nonetheless.

“I see your eyes moving, Itsy Bitsy,” the physical incarnation of scorched earth told her. “Admit you’re awake so we can get to the fun part.”

Caught, Laura blinked her eyes open and pushed aside the A-line bobbed pink wig which now sat askew across her scalp. “You’re Lucifer,” she observed, staring into the girl’s pale, angular face.

Lucifer sat back on her hands, unheeding of the dusty floor or her immaculate white suit and answered, offhand, “That’s right. Angel of the pit, fire and brimstone in the flesh — The Desolation, at your service.”

“You’re my favorite,” Laura confided in her, a little dazed both by the unconsciousness and the attention. “I always try to see your shows, but—”

“Well, I tend to sell out pretty quick,” Lucifer returned, grin lazy and cocky around the edges. “Hey, do you want to see something cool? Or, well, not _very_ cool, but cool enough, probably. Novelty value.”

Laura thought she’d probably jump off a bridge if this quicksilver-powerful girl asked her to, but saying so was hardly the impression she wanted to leave, so she pushed herself up on her hands and asked “Why?”

“You were the last one to pass out at Valentine’s gig, too,” Lucifer replied, head cocked. “You’re a curiosity. I like curiosities.”

This was more than enough — Laura took the hand that Lucifer The Desolation offered to help her stand, half-afraid that the hand would be pulled back, a trick, before she could touch. It wasn’t. The fingers were dry and warm, and didn’t withdraw even when Laura held on a moment too long, just lead hear down labyrinthine corridors and explained, “The Host is preaching to the non-believers — sorry, ‘talking to the press.’”


End file.
